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Ancien and the Magic Tablet Anime Film's New Trailer Features Full Theme Song

Warner Bros. Japan began streaming a new four-minute trailer on Saturday for Ancien and the Magic Tablet (Hirune Hime: Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari), the new anime film by director Kenji Kamiyama. The video features the film's full theme song: a cover of The Monkees' "Daydream Believer" song performed by lead actress Mitsuki Takahata.

The film opens in Japan on March 18. The New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF) will screen the film on March 19 in Japanese with English subtitles.

NYICFF describes the story:

This fender and genre-bending film takes us into the not-too-distant machine-driven future. Kokone should be diligently studying for her university entrance exams, but she just can't seem to stay awake. Aside from stealing precious study time, her napping is even more distracting, as it brings on strange dreams with warring machines that hint at family secrets that have been dormant for years. She can't ask her father, a hipster mechanic more talented and artful than his job requires, as he's always busy modifying motorcycles and cars in flights of fancy. What are these visions that lead Kokone at once closer to and farther away from her family? Like all the best anime, the film revels in multilayered fantasy to show how sometimes opposites—waking and dreaming, the past and the future—are far more intertwined than they appear.

I.G Port's new anime studio subsidiary Signal.MD (Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note, Anime Tamago's "Colorful Ninja Iromaki" short) is animating the film as its first anime film project. Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit, Eden of the East) is directing the film, as well as penning the script. Satoko Morikawa (The Cat Returns, Eden of the East, Xi AVANT) is designing the characters, and Shigeto Koyama (Michiko & Hatchin, Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit, Heroman) is in charge of mechanical design. Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XV) is composing the music for the film.

The film stars:

• Mitsuki Takahata as Kokone Morikawa/Ancien
• Arata Furuta as Ichirō Watanabe
• Hideki Takahashi as Isshin Shijima/King Heartland
• Shinnosuke Mitsushima as Morio Sawatari
• Tomoya Maeno as Kijita/Takiiji
• Yōsuke Eguchi as Momotarō Morikawa/Pōchi
• Rie Kugimiya as Joy
• Wataru Takagi as Sawatari/Ukkii
• Risa Shimizu as Ikumi Morikawa

Yen Press is publishing Hana Ichika's Napping Princess - The Story of the Unknown Me manga adaptation simultaneously with Japan.

The film is also getting an anime short that will debut on Hulu Japan this month.